Blam.

April 4th, 2006

I get lots of blam (blog spam).

In fact, viagra sale buy cialis I found an ad for valium attached to my post about voting against the gay marriage amendment. (I thought that was sort of an appropriate match of ad to topic, actually.)

What has me thinking about blam is the creation of Buzzmetrics.

Buzzmetrics is a division of Nielsen Media Reserach: the people responsible for the famous Nielsen ratings.

BuzzMetrics’ purpose is to monitor, measure and analyze comments about TV programs and other products on blogs and in Internet chat rooms.

My question is how long do you think it will take before TV shows and car companies start creating their own “word-of-mouth” blam?

They’ll be a lot more subtle than the fake comments you get now with a link to pornonthecob.com. (Yes, it’s a real site. And for the love of God, don’t go there.)

They won’t blatantly try to sell products.

They’ll just say something nice about a product, movie, etc.

Maybe in response to something you wrote.

Maybe in a way that just seems natural.

The point will be to get good “word-of-mouth” and create “buzz” that can then be measured and reported.

(Popularity builds on itself.)

So what’s the harm?

The problem is it’s just another way the beauty of the internet can be perverted by unscrupulous people for their own ends.

And I already get enough obvious blam. I sure as hell don’t want to have to spend my time trying to figure out if a poster really does love their trucks “Ford Tough.”

Entry Filed under: Blogs,Observations